Bob Benton
Bob Benton is the Black Terror, a Golden Age hero published by Pines who debuted in 1941. A pharmacist who discovered a powerful chemical formula, he gained extraordinary abilities and donned a skull-emblazoned costume to fight crime.
Born in the pages of Exciting Comics in 1941, Bob Benton is a genuine Golden Age original — conjured by Richard Hughes and David Gabrielsen for Pines Comics at a moment when the superhero genre was still finding its footing. With 70 catalog appearances stretching across an astonishing 84 years, from that debut issue all the way to 2025, he's proven himself one of the more quietly enduring figures to emerge from that era of four-color invention. His adventures have kept him in remarkable company — sharing pages with the patriotic Fighting Yank and a cast of Golden Age stalwarts — and at least one of his appearances carries the weight of a recognized collector's key. From Exciting Comics to modern archival editions and even the pages of Vampirella versus Red Sonja, Bob Benton is exactly the kind of deep-cut discovery that reminds you how rich and surprising the Golden Age truly was.
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Trivia
- The Black Terror's civilian identity as a pharmacist/druggist is so foundational to the character's concept that virtually every summary of him leads with the profession before even mentioning the cape — a rare case where the day job genuinely defines the hero.comics.org
- Rather than leaning on a fantasy artifact or the radiation-accident trope, the Black Terror's powers trace back to 'formic ethers,' a then-common but now-obscure comics conceit that rooted his origin in an accidental chemistry mishap — a detail that marks him as a product of a very specific moment in the medium's history.comics.org
Top series
Covers through the years — 1944–2019
1944 
1997 
2008 
2014 
2019